Schuyler, George (1895–1977)

Journalist

George S. Schuyler is touted as the most prolific African American journalist of the 20th century. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, and reared in Syracuse, New York, as a youth he was fascinated by the early presence of blacks in the military. Schuyler perused the pages of Civil War veteran Joseph T. Wilson's illustrated book The Black Phalanx(1890), which chronicled the persistence and gallantry of blacks as far back as the American Revolution. Black protest and affirmation of manhood had been the order of the day long before Schuyler put pen to paper in an effort to trouble the waters of inequity in America's armed forces during World War II.

By 1912, the small African American population of Syracuse felt the weight of discrimination. Jobs outside of the service sector were rarely available. For the ambitious Schuyler, Syracuse, with its exclusionary hiring practices, held no promise of a better life. Enlistment in the Army was an obvious choice. The Army offered travel and, above all, respectability.

[Page 769]Schuyler served two terms in the armed forces. It was during his second tour of duty in Honolulu, Hawaii, that he would begin to hone his writing skills by contributing to The Service, a civilian magazine whose core audience was enlisted soldiers. After U.S. entry into World War I, the Army implemented its first Negro Officer's Training Camp in Des Moines, Iowa. Schuyler was one of 80 non-commissioned officers of the segregated 25th Regiment appointed to help train the new recruits. Already a corporal, Schuyler was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant.

While on leave and awaiting his next assignment, Lieutenant Schuyler was taunted into tarnishing an otherwise exemplary career. He approached a foreign-born white bootblack in Philadelphia's train station and requested a shoe shine. The indignant bootblack responded that he refused to shine a “nigger's” boot, and Schuyler exploded. In a fit of emotional indignation, he deserted the armed forces, refusing to serve a country that tolerated such gross racial injustices. He surrendered before being declared AWOL. Schuyler's discharge and subsequent sentence upon court-martial was five years imprisonment, later reduced to one year by Pres. Woodrow Wilson. An exemplary prisoner, Schuyler would serve only nine months. Outside of his wife, Josephine, and a close personal friend, knowledge of his desertion was never made public until it was discovered years after his death.

In 1922, A. Philip Randolph, organizer of the black labor union the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and publisher of Messenger, offered Schuyler his first professional employment in the field of journalism. Schuyler became managing editor of Messenger, which folded in 1928. A friend once observed that, unlike Randolph, Schuyler was a socialist more by association than inclination; even though he joined the party in 1921, he never seriously embraced the party or its politics. As Schuyler explained, it was the opportunity for intelligent discourse with his peers that drew him to the Socialist Party.

As early as 1927, Schuyler's writings captured the attention and respect of the renowned “dean of American letters,” H. L. Mencken. Of Schuyler, Mencken would comment, “I am more and more convinced that he is the most competent editorial writer in this great free Republic” (Schuyler, 234). Mencken often solicited essays from the satirist Schuyler for inclusion in his publication The American Mercury. Schuyler's prowess drew the attention of other publishers within the white press. New York Evening Post publisher George Palmer Putnam hired Schuyler as an investigative reporter. Considering the segregationist practices of the times, Schuyler was an anomaly among black journalists.

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